the whitechapel
July 28, 2015 11:03 pm Leave your thoughts
The New Concrete (Visual Poetry in the 21st Century) was launched at the Whitechapel Gallery last weekend, with a series of films, readings and performances.
There were too many delights to mention – you really had to be there – but amongst the gems, the screenings included Rick Myers’ beautifully contemplative An Excavation/A Reading (Before the Statue of Endymion), Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim’s, wonderful Barcodes, Sophie Herxheimer’s London and Victoria Bean’s, Playtime with Venus and Every Morning She’d Leave Me. 
Highlights of the spoken word performances were Chris McCabe and Sam Winston performing Dictionary and Paula Claire’s ILAYITONW (a call and response piece celebrating The New Concrete in all its Google guises). 
Based in Oxford, Paula Claire has a large Archive of concrete/visual/sound poetry and is currently busy writing and collating from WORDtoART: browsing the Paula Claire Archive.
Barrie channelled the spirit of Kurt Schwitters for his surprisingly poignant rendition of A Song For An Art School and was quite overwhelmed to have been sitting in the same room as John Furnival, let alone being in a book alongside him and so many other artists and poets he has long admired.On sale at the event, we had our first chance to see the book in all its glory – and it really is a beautiful publication. Rush out and buy your copy now.The New Concrete is available from The Southbank Centre shop.Photographs of the event courtesy of Julie Johnstone and Marina Chalkia. Photographs of Paula Claire courtesy of Paul San Casciani.
Categorised in: anthology, concrete poetry, performances, poetry
This post was written by caseroom2020